Simon Brown (00:03.583)
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Simon Brown. I'm one of the co -authors of the book, The Curious Advantage, and today I'm here with my co -author, Garrett Jones. Unfortunately, Paul can't be with us today. We're delighted though to be joined by Dr. Diane Hamilton. Hi, Diane.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (00:24.216)
Hi, I'm so excited to be back. I'd love coming on to your show because you guys touch on the subject that I care about most, so this will be fun.

Simon Brown (00:33.109)
Welcome back. think you're our first returning guest as well. So it's great to have you back for a second time. So you're the founder and CEO of Tenera, consultancy business. You're also a keynote speaker. You have your own radio show and you're author of six books, including the newly released Curiosity Unleashed, achieving business excellence by challenging the status quo.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (00:37.883)
I appreciate that. I love it.

Simon Brown (00:58.279)
So maybe kick us off, can you give us a reminder of your journey and how you ended up where you are today?

Dr. Diane Hamilton (01:04.994)
Well, you I've done a lot of things that made me more curious as I got older. I think a lot of the jobs I've had made me scratch my head and wonder why people weren't more curious. And as I started to interview people, like you guys were great guests on my show, and I've had a lot of people I've interviewed, thousands actually, I started to notice that a lot of them were more curious than I'd like to have seen in some of the students, because I teach for a lot of different universities still.

I thought, well what's different about these people? And it made me really recognize the value of curiosity, which I had always been pretty curious. And I thought, well why aren't other people curious? And that's led me down a rabbit hole of really interesting things that led to my work. So that's kind of the story.

Simon Brown (01:56.671)
And I know that rabbit hole, there's some great models and great examples and things that we've talked about before. So maybe let's start with your latest book. not content with five books, you've written the sixth, Curiosity Unleashed. So it builds on a lot of your previous work. So the previous book that we talked about last time was Cracking the Curiosity Code.

Simon Brown (02:23.241)
have used the fate model from that on many times. And maybe we'll do a reminder in a bit for our listeners around that one as well. But what are the new insights and the surprising things that you've learned about curiosity in your latest book and through the process of writing the book?

Dr. Diane Hamilton (02:39.758)
Well, you know, I never thought I was going to write another book. I did write a chapter for a book on curiosity from a group called Thinkers 50 out of London. And I did a chapter, but not an entire book. And after I wrote my book on the first book, Cracking the Curiosity Code, I just learned so much that I hadn't really recognized prior to writing that book. So I started speaking to groups so much about different things that

Simon Brown (02:49.342)
Mmm.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (03:09.784)
in the book. People started asking me, what have you seen in this respect? Or what are companies doing? And then I'd go to different companies and help them. And then I'd learn new things. And I thought, well, this needs to be an entirely new book because I kept getting questions about the financial connection between developing curiosity and the outcomes and things like that. And not just like, it's good to read a book or it's nice to learn a new topic about something. I mean, that's great for the sake

But what I was focusing on was really what I meant by curiosity. And it took me a while to really define it in my mind, even after the book came out. And I started to think it really was about getting out of status quo thinking. And it's about doing things differently than what you've done in the past, because what worked in the past doesn't always work in the future. mean, if you asked Kodak that, they might tell you they agree with you,

So it's just something that I found interesting was so many people were holding on to their glory days of what worked and they just kept repeating it over and over again and it worked great in the past and they were frustrated by why aren't we getting somewhere now? And so I did a lot of research into organizations that held on to status quo thinking and those that did not and I looked at people who did and did

not. And that's what this book was more about instead of just talking about writing about the value of curiosity, which it's there. I made it much more specific as to what happens to you if you embrace it, what happens to you if you don't, and the financial benefits of creating a culture that embraces curiosity, which I know you have done with your work, Simon. And I think it's really so important that companies do that. And I'm just so surprised

the companies either who don't do it or they do it and we never get to hear about their results. And that's what I want to know are the results out there and I'd like to see more companies share them.

Simon Brown (05:20.885)
Absolutely. So the definition you're using is sort of getting out of this getting out of status quo thinking. So we talk about an attitude of wonder with a spirit of exploration. So that exploration, I guess, is similarly getting out of that sort of status quo thinking. And interestingly, we've asked many of our guests on the podcast, you know, what's their definition of curiosity? we've had pretty wide variety. So everyone has the same sort of theme, but definitely sort of some broad definitions. So maybe dive

Dr. Diane Hamilton (05:48.362)
anyone else said status quo? i like status quo sounds better the english version. we say it's status here. which have you had anybody say that? because that's really how i mean or do they just use different terms for it?

Simon Brown (06:03.069)
Different certainly talked. think it John Hagel talked about Curiously and learning but learning in the context of not learning existing things but learning new things So I guess that's sort of here not not learning the status quo but learning learning things that haven't previously existed I know garak you can think of some other ones as well that Hmm

Dr. Diane Hamilton (06:14.99)
the same.

Garrick (06:21.432)
Well, I think about Warren Berger, you know, Warren Berger talking about questionology. Exactly. And, you know, what Warren makes us think about, hang on, what are the questions you're asking in this context? And he talks about how dangerous it is to ask the same questions in a new context. If you haven't appreciated, you can't use, which I think is what you're saying about Stanis Quirk, you can't, it's dangerous to use your old ways of thinking in a new situation, thinking the same outcomes are going to.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (06:22.474)
He is... yeah, he's been on my show. Mm -hmm.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (06:50.232)
Right.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (06:53.26)
You it's interesting, I speak to women's groups sometimes, and when I do, add a slide to my slides that have, I think it was from Fortune, they did a survey of people, like all the CEOs that were women that have been successful and asked them what led to their success. And I list a lot of them on there. I mean, they're like IBM and big names. And I add a couple, I Oprah and I add Mae Jemison since she did so much

the NASA. But I think that what was interesting to me is if you ask them what led to your success, whether they use the word curiosity or not, it just varies a little bit. Some of them use different versions like asking questions, exploring, and like you said, but they all credited this, not all, everybody on the list, but a lot of them credited curiosity or some version of curiosity as what led to their success.

Garrick (07:50.222)
Well, you've got this focus on individuals and highly curious individuals in your book, which I found fascinating. And you've mentioned, you know, Oprah and Mae Jemison and you also people like Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Albert Einstein. I just saw a fantastic Instagram with Warren Buffett talking about his his partner. The two of them

like a unit who worked together for 50 years. And he talks about how the interaction between each other challenged each other to kind of look outside of what other people were looking at. But can you tell us a little bit more about this idea about highly curious individuals and what is behind it, do you think? We know they're successful, what gets them

Dr. Diane Hamilton (08:44.794)
Well, it's interesting because you mentioned a lot of the people I wrote about in the book and Warren Buffett always mentions how much curiosity was so important to him and you can see him talk about that. He's got a book in his hand all half the time and he shares that with a lot of people. And then I listed a lot of people that I thought, you know, maybe controversial, like some people don't love Elon Musk, but I thought he was important to add because it did lead to

success. And a lot of, I don't know if you've read Walter Isaacson's book on him, but it was a really great look at the kinds of things he did that demonstrated his curiosity. He didn't just put parts in because everybody put those parts in. made sure they were first of all needed by for physics, you know, you need this part for sure. But he was known for saying the best part is no part because we got to know whether we need this part or even, you know, why it's required.

So he went down and he, those list of reasons of why we need this and if it's important we keep it, if it's not we see if we don't need it. And I think that what was interesting is,

Like you said, why do some of these people hold on to their curiosity and why don't they? I read the book, I Was by Wozniak of Apple, he, I think, kept his curiosity because of his influence from his father. He writes a lot about how his father would bring home different gadgets from work and wires and teach him about how this wire is needed because it brings electricity or this is required because you need this. And he taught him how to

build computers later. So I think it ties into my work with the factors that inhibit curiosity. Now one of the factors is your environment, your family, friends, you've ever interacted with in your life, whomever. And with him, that interaction actually was a positive influence for him because he had a positive family member to help him keep his curiosity. So there is the good side

Dr. Diane Hamilton (10:57.415)
some of these factors that inhibit curiosity if we've had a positive influence in that respect. And I think Wozniak's a great example of that.

Simon Brown (11:08.543)
So maybe diving into the steering away from the status quo. So maybe can you share why it's so important to not embrace the status quo? Why if companies find a model that works, they shouldn't just keep doing more of the same thing.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (11:27.436)
Well, you know, in the United States, there's I'm not even sure if all of the company examples listed in the book are in Europe and elsewhere. But Kodak, obviously a lot of people are aware of. we have Netflix. There's so many. I Netflix took over for Blockbuster. should say Blockbuster was a big company that rented video. And so there's a lot of these companies that we look at in the past and we go, wow, they just seem like they would never not be

You'd walk into a pharmacy here and you'd get hit by Kodak film. It just was everywhere. And so I think there's so many examples of companies that were just so successful that they thought they were too big to fail. They thought whatever they did would be the Midas Touch because it worked so great in the past. And we know with AI now coming to be so strong that everything's going to you know, upheaved because it's

so different of a market. And I used to sell computers in the 80s. And we used to just talk to people and people would freak out. Computers are coming. It's going to take your job. All these bad things are going to happen. And some jobs, of course, were lost. And then some were replaced with other things. I mean, we have social media managers now. We didn't know we were going have social media. You know, we have all these new jobs that AI can.

can take over for some of them, but then we'll have new jobs that it won't. So I think it's really important for companies to really look at how they can utilize new technologies and consider building a culture of curiosity that embraces this. Because if you hang on to what worked in the past, it's probably not going to work in the future. Because the future is in a whole new context, as you said before, Simon, that Warren was,

you said Warren had said that you can't keep thinking that you're in a vacuum because everything around you is changing. you know, the famous, you know, you just have a faster horse comment from Ford that if you ask people what they want. And so sometimes you don't know what you want until you start exploring and asking questions. And I think a lot of it depends on learning more about AI and its capabilities. And I know you guys have done some, I loved your interview where you

Simon Brown (13:35.903)
Peace.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (13:53.06)
Was it chat GPT? One of the AI models. Yeah, it was a great one. hope people listen to that one. It was wonderful. And I think it's interesting. I get in lot of arguments with chat because it's really interesting because I love it because it does a lot of things to help my day.

Simon Brown (13:54.899)
Yes, yes, yeah, was touchy -pussy, yeah.

Garrick (13:54.99)
Yeah, we love that

Dr. Diane Hamilton (14:11.054)
you know, be more efficient. But I actually did a research study recently where I gave it the data and asked it, because I thought, well, this will be so nice if it does the statistics for me, because I don't love doing factor analysis and whatever, you know, correlation analysis. And so I thought, well, correlation analysis is easy as a computer. You just put it in as like a calculator. And it did not do at all what I asked it to do. In fact, you know, I put in, I had 51 C

Simon Brown (14:13.023)
Yeah.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (14:40.96)
executives in my study asking them you know what was your financial impact of creating a culture of curiosity and it kept coming back with here's what 250 of them said and I'm thinking this is problem

Simon Brown (14:52.971)
Yeah.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (14:57.132)
And if I didn't pay attention to that, I argued with it for a long time to try and get it to do what I wanted. And it just wouldn't do it because there's something missing that it needed for it to give you the output you wanted. And I don't know if a lot of people are realizing that it can't do everything it thinks it can do. So we have to have people do the things it can't do. And eventually it'll do more things. But we have to be curious to recognize that.

Simon Brown (15:16.831)
Yeah.

Garrick (15:23.722)
It's a tool. It's a tool. You can't use a hammer to screw in a nail, you know, those kinds of things.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (15:26.454)
It is, it is. But I thought it would be more like a calculator, you know? How can a calculator is going to give you, for math, thought math is a no -brainer, it's going to give me... It is, it is. That surprised me.

Simon Brown (15:30.866)
Exactly. We have been asked.

Simon Brown (15:37.941)
Maths is one it's still struggling a bit with. We have been our model of the criticality piece. So criticality, think in the age of AI is becoming absolutely crucial that what seems like it might be true, what looks like a great answer from that GPT or other large language models, we need that critical thinking.

Garrick (15:40.622)
Do you remember when they brought

Garrick (15:58.446)
How do we know? How do we know?

Dr. Diane Hamilton (16:01.46)
If it looks too good to be true, it's usually filling in what you want. It wants you to think so that it looks better. It tries to make you look good, which is kind of nice, but it's not helpful. And so I think it's, you know, I'm part of a group that's associated with executive networks, which is a big company here that is all the CHROs are part of. And I think that's how I found you originally, Simon, through that group. But I took one of their

Garrick (16:03.647)
Usually.

Simon Brown (16:11.965)
Exactly.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (16:31.366)
recently which was really interesting about getting certified to, I have a certification to ask the right questions to get what you want, to get the prompting correct, to get the AI to give you what you want. And I thought that was really fascinating. I think we all could benefit from doing that.

Simon Brown (16:43.219)
Yep.

Simon Brown (16:50.729)
Yeah, I actually did one earlier today, which is a Coursera course on using GenAI as your thought partner. so that's great that it's sort of prompting you with ideas, with challenges, with questions, and providing that role. You still need the criticality element on what it's telling you, but it's very powerful at being a sort of thought partner on ideas.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (17:12.374)
It definitely helps to know how to do that.

Simon Brown (17:15.069)
Yeah, staying on the sort of getting away from the status quo. So using some of the examples that you reference there, I Kodak, so the classic one where they invented the digital camera but then weren't able to actually utilize it. what stops people from getting away from the status quo or what keeps people in the comfort zone that they sort of know and recognize?

Dr. Diane Hamilton (17:28.396)
Yeah.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (17:41.218)
Well, you know, with Kodak, they didn't want to cannibalize their product. And they thought if they did this, then, you know, they're going to lose all that. But they're going to lose all that anyway, because somebody else is going to cannibalize their product. So I think it's recognizing your culture is stuck and that other people have passed you like you're standing still and thinking that I think, you know, in the past, we didn't see how fast things could change.

And now we do know and we have case studies like Kodak's and Blockbusters and there's companies that really question.

You know, do we need to put this to rest? Ben and Jerry's I used as an example in the book and they make ice cream and they actually give their products a burial. They have a website with little headstones and they say this was a great flavor from this time to this time, but we've realized that we're not doing that anymore because you guys don't want that. And you can't force feed people ice cream they don't want, right? So they learn that and they're very innovative in that respect. mean, just.

from one suggestion on a board of asking for flavor suggestions, they came up with their chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. mean, the amount of chocolate chip cookie dough they sell now is staggering just from asking one question. So I think there's a lot of great examples of companies who realize, where they realize that they don't know everything. We can get some feedback from other people and get some insights and what

worked in the past doesn't always work in the future.

Garrick (19:22.806)
I so many things I want to ask you about. You get Simon, do you have a follow up? I've got so many things I want to ask you about, Diane. I mean, the first thing that it reminds me of the great futurologist, Chris Meyer, who talked to us about ants and termites and talked about from the Big Bang to the Big Mac, where he said, when ants have evolved to the point where they always

Simon Brown (19:23.145)
Yeah.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (19:26.903)
Ha ha.

Garrick (19:52.492)
have a main source of food, but they also always have small trails going up looking for other forms of food like a Big Mac. If your Big Mac gets washed away, you need to have something else to keep the hive alive. And it's the same with curiosity, you that idea of we need to be always out there being curious about things out of the status quo, I believe, to have the things that allow us to pivot.

And as you say, to have the other things in place that will allow us to stay relevant in the market and so on. This leads me to the idea of finance. The thing I loved about your book is you get into the financial value of curiosity really, really quickly. And it's such an important point. As you know, we talk about the greatest driver of value in the digital age is curiosity. And people go, that's great. Fantastic.

And we have a lot of qualitative reasons to back that up. But we're also looking for financial reasons or quantitative reasons to back up. I believe that there are vast numbers of quantitative reasons. There's a huge amount of financial value to having options to pivot to and so on, because you're going to keep your business alive. But it's early days, isn't it? In the kind of how do we put a number on the value? And what are the tools we use to do

Dr. Diane Hamilton (21:20.62)
Right, right. Well, you know, I want to touch on before I answer that what you said before about ants, because I had a whole part of the book about biomimicry. And I think a lot of what we've created is just based on nature and some of these unbelievable solutions to things. I it was slime mold. There was I think I included in the book how they created how to do roadways and different things from following its paths and what's most efficient. So part of being successful and being

being curious is looking at what has nature done to make this happen. But as far as the financial question, that was the one that drove me the most crazy. And another time I argued with Chad, because she would just say, or I say it she because it has a name of a female underneath it, but I'm going to say it's a she. She said she was a she? Okay. So she,

Simon Brown (22:02.409)
Good.

Garrick (22:09.208)
She told us she was she in our interview. Yeah.

Simon Brown (22:12.659)
Did, yeah.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (22:17.93)
argued with me quite a bit that you know it's intuitive that curiosity ties into financial benefits and I said well give me the data show me what the studies were let me know what the you know I want to have I want you to tell me how engagement proving engagement has saved this company xyz dollars and it's because they had a curiosity initiative those are the kinds of things I wanted to give me

And I gave up because she didn't have it. And there really isn't a lot of data. I know Simon, you did some of this research in your past company. And I don't know what you think about this, but do you think companies are sharing that kind of data? Should they share that? Can they share that kind of data? And what have you seen in that respect?

Simon Brown (22:50.099)
Mmm. Yep.

Simon Brown (23:03.517)
Yeah, so we were able to look at examples of, I guess, new products that came about from, that were driven by curiosity. So that two people were curious around what would happen if they linked their research together and you were there.

were there things that could benefit each other from it and that curiosity then led on to, in that instance, new medicines which then have vast value and impact on people's lives as well. So you could certainly trace back, this product would not be in existence if it was not for the curiosity of these two people who wanted to explore and were curious about what happened if they linked their two bits of research together. that way you can

that value to curiosity but I think sort of being able to say curiosity drives you know directly this value is a harder one to go up from curiosity versus back from something that could be attributed to curiosity.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (24:06.63)
Right. Well, you know, what I've been working with with companies is what I'd like to see is companies giving something like cash -ins, you know, measuring your level of curiosity tells you if you high, are you low, kind of get a baseline, whatever you want, you can create your own if you've, you know, whatever you're trying to establish. then do curiosity -based training.

And then get people to like when I train them, I get them over the four factors that inhibit curiosity. And then I again want them to measure their curiosity levels later and then correlate that like you did. I know Simon with engagement or you can measure engagement. can measure different things, whether they use Gallup or whatever terms they whatever way they measure these things. And I think it's really important because I talked to you a little before the show. I had done some recent research looking at

Simon Brown (24:47.306)
Yes.

Simon Brown (25:00.948)
Yes.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (25:01.13)
financial benefits. haven't published it yet working on that. what I was at, what I asked is I went to the C -suite and I asked them, you seeing financial benefits with engagement and turnover and different aspects of what they're seeing? And if you're having a culture of curiosity, has it been financially beneficial to you? And they had C -suite from everything. If I listed the C level O's, mean, every COO, CEO, CRO, you name it,

They were all in there and they all

were giving me such this unbelievable feedback. I kind of didn't expect it to be quite as positive because I didn't know that so many people were doing these initiatives. And I was really glad to hear that. But the smaller companies would say, the CEOs or CEOs or whoever, would say they'd saved at least 100 ,000 in the last year from doing initiatives. And then the larger companies would save at least a million a year. And I thought this was great feedback.

And I thought, this is what I want to see. I want to see companies publish that they move the needle on engagement. They move the needle on innovation and whatever it is. And this is the financial benefit we receive from that. And you're just not seeing companies publish these results. And I think it's so important to get that out there in the literature so that other people are aware that if we do this, we're going to have bottom line benefits because curiosity leads to engagement, innovation,

Simon Brown (26:05.45)
Yeah.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (26:35.18)
I

to find out what's keeping people from being curious. And that's what my research found.

Simon Brown (27:10.121)
Well, come on in a moment to that one as well. On the value of it, we had Spencer Harrison on from INSEAD on a few episodes back, he shared that he was doing some long -term research looking at the curiosity of the CEO and advisors to the CEO and sort of those around them, and then correlating that to the sort of long -term performance of the organization. that research was ongoing, but at the point he was indicating it was sort

Dr. Diane Hamilton (27:29.582)
That's great.

Simon Brown (27:40.215)
towards this correlation between the level of curiosity at the top of the organisation and in the long -term business success of the company. So that was reassuring, at least that was also backing that up at an overall macro level.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (27:54.518)
I'd love to see it. When it comes out, tag me. I want to see it.

Garrick (27:57.55)
Do you think much has happened, Diane, from before we last spoke, which was about a year or so, maybe a bit more ago. mean, curiosity seems to be much more on the agenda now. Do you think it's becoming mainstream, if you like, in terms of companies who are serious about digital and just having to shift and change have to put curiosity

Simon Brown (28:01.151)
Sounds good.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (28:09.23)
Yeah.

Garrick (28:27.284)
into the mix? What are your thoughts?

Dr. Diane Hamilton (28:30.658)
That's a good question because you know when I wrote my book so many years ago I had set up a Google alert to tell me anytime that there was an article on or study done on curiosity and then I had to take minus Mars Rover out because I got my email blew up but

Simon Brown (28:46.163)
Hahaha.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (28:49.554)
Back then, I didn't get many responses. Every once in a while, somebody would mention the word curiosity, but a lot of it was kid related. It wasn't in the workplace. It was just kind of general stuff. And after my book came out, I started getting more and more and more and more and more. now it's coming up all constantly that that curious. And I love that everybody's jumping on board because I think

For me, it was, I want this to be everybody talking about this. want everybody writing books about it. I everybody having podcasts about this because I think it solves so many problems that a lot of people didn't recognize were tied to that. And I think we never needed it more than we need it now with AI because AI has its own kind of curiosity and it's that, which was interesting. And I think that we need to know how to,

see where our value is with a world that has AI that has its own kind of curiosity.

Garrick (29:56.046)
Because it seems so limited. We thought AI opens up the infinite, but actually we're learning about the limitations of the language models and so on. And then we're also, as you were saying, learning how to engage with it and ask the right questions and to get the kind of outcomes that we're looking for. We're all learning together. Can you talk a little bit more? I mean, your research is so great around the things that stop us or inhibit us from being curious.

Can you remind us again about your fake bottle and so

Dr. Diane Hamilton (30:31.032)
Well, I want to add the one thing on the curiosity, on the AI thing, because they have developed an artificial curiosity in that when they had computers playing Mario Brothers, they would find that the computer wanted to find out what the next level was so bad it would allow itself to die to see what would happen if that happened, right?

Simon Brown (30:53.045)
Wow.

Garrick (30:53.57)
Yeah.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (30:56.118)
So we got some competition here is my point is there is this level of curiosity with AI. But as far as my research, I think that the most important thing that I did was I was frustrated by the fact that nobody was looking at what was inhibiting curiosity. Because to me, you to fix something, you have to figure out what stops it. Right. And if you don't know what the problem is, how do you fix it? So I studied thousands of people for years and came up with the curiosity code index, which is an

that determines these factors that inhibit curiosity. And the four factors are fear, assumptions, which is the voice in your head basically, technology, which is over and under utilization of it, and environment, which was everybody with whom we've ever interacted. which was interesting to me because I expected a very

percentage of people being influenced more by fear and maybe less by technology or less by whatever and they were very similar in how much they impacted us and fear did not surprise me at all and nobody wants to ask questions in meetings and look stupid and you know and have that sense of not looking prepared or whatever it is that people fear but the assumptions make a lot of sense because we tell ourselves this isn't going to be interesting they're just going

give me more work, whatever it is that we tell ourselves can definitely inhibit us. But technology surprised me at the time. remember thinking, huh, hadn't thought about that. And the people who take the assessment sometimes think, well, I'm good at technology. I'm going to do okay on this. And then they find out that they don't do as well because sometimes it's over or under utilization of it. And we, we can rely so much on it that if I relied on chat GPTs telling me,

my 250 people did so great, I would have been in big trouble because that wasn't really accurate, right? So we have to know the foundation behind things and we have to know whether what we're getting is accurate information. And then we could have low tech and high tech days. Okay. So we all catch up. We've got all the stuff that we're behind on. And then once we are, we know how to use it as best that we can. the people who are surprised usually are people

Garrick (32:52.888)
Mmm. Yeah.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (33:19.706)
who just love the technology, but don't know the foundation behind it maybe. but it's, it's a combination and then environment didn't surprise me at all because that was a big one for me because. know, we have siblings, we have teachers, we have, you know, people maybe with good intentions who say things that could inadvertently inhibit us. And, sometimes teachers can't answer all our questions or, you know, siblings can be ruthless. They'll say, you don't like that to you. That's the dumbest thing I've ever.

of and then you go you don't want to upset the apple cart so you're you know you you try to get along and there's a lot of things that leaders and don't recognize in the workplace that that it's maybe not them that people are inhibited by but their past leader their past co -worker their past social media I mean there's just everything that could inhibit people so for me when I train organizations we go through and touch on all these factors and do kind of a

SWOT analysis to overcome these threats and weaknesses. And then we create smart goals and an action plan to overcome all these factors. And then the other half of the training, which is really interesting because I'm developing a training program right now in Luxembourg. I'm going for Fulbright as a part of a training I'm doing there. But what I incorporate in the second half of my training,

is how do we fix all these issues that leaders have already told us are the problems? Plus, do you agree that these are our problems? What other problems would you like to add to this list? And then you get the employees giving you from their perspective, this is how you would fix these problems by building curiosity. So it's kind of like taking a picture out of Disney's book who went to their employees that were having high turnover and asked me, how can we make your job better? And they saved $100 ,000 just from asking a simple question that

Simon Brown (35:07.295)
you.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (35:14.254)
you go to the horse's mouth and find out what the problem is. How can we solve this? It's great for leaders because they get this compiled version of all the answers for them. It's great for the trainer because they look like a genius because they came up with all this stuff. And so we get all these answers and it's all up to the leaders which ones, of course, they can implement and what they decide.

Garrick (35:37.486)
The thing I want to really take you back to, maybe the technology piece is fascinating for me and the surprise there. But you use a term in your book called artificial curiosity. And I have to explore that a little bit more. What do mean by artificial curiosity? How does that relate to artificial intelligence or chat, GBT and all the other things that are going on? But artificial curiosity is a brilliant term.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (36:04.608)
Well, you know, I had people on my show years ago talking about this and it goes back to that Mario Brothers experiment. And that's what they were referring to, I think, when they talk about artificial curiosity is that the computer actually becomes curious by wanting to figure out an outcome. it's it is like the way people think in some respects, because it's willing to find out it wants to know what's on the next level. And so that

artificial curiosity. And you don't think

AI is doing these things that are kind of human centric, but there, are aspects that you go, well, this is going to be interesting where this goes because, you know, I had the father of AI on my show at one time and he's like, yeah, computers and everything's going to take over. We're going to be gone. And so I don't know, you you have to be a little worried about some of this, you know.

Garrick (36:58.186)
Great.

Simon Brown (36:58.549)
Wow.

Simon Brown (37:06.453)
So we're talking with Dr. Diane Hamilton. She's the founder and CEO of TANERA, consulting in media -based business. She's a keynote speaker and she has a US nationally syndicated radio show that's called Take the Lead. She's also the former MBA program chair at the Forbes School of Business, listed by Leaders Hum in their 200 biggest voices in leadership and also in their top 10 most powerful women leaders in HR. Diane's also authored multiple books which are required in universities around the world.

including, so we've referenced the cracking the curiosity code, but also the power of perception. And then her newly released book, go check it out, which is Curiosity Unleashed, achieving business excellence by challenging the status quo. So in the latest book, then, you also talk about companies that are starting to get it right around curiosity. And you cite several examples. So what are these companies that are leaders in encouraging curiosity doing?

Dr. Diane Hamilton (38:02.658)
Well, you worked for one of them. thought they did a great job at Novartis because of the culture that they rewarded learning. They rewarded, they had Curiosity Month. They did a lot of amazing things. And I'm sure you've covered that a lot on the show, so I'll pick a different choice, but.

Simon Brown (38:04.831)
Yep.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (38:22.414)
I did some work with Verizon, the wireless carrier here in the United States, and I liked what they did. They had me come out and create videos for their onboarding process. And I would speak a little, couple of minutes about the value of curiosity and why it was so important. And then they would take examples of employees who were highly curious and share their journey of why this had made them successful.

Simon Brown (38:25.748)
Mm

Dr. Diane Hamilton (38:52.418)
be curious and how it led to their current position. And these were pretty short videos and all maybe five minutes or something. And they ran them throughout all their stores, throughout all their onboarding, throughout all their intranet to share like, look at what happens. This is what we value. We want you to be curious and look at you will be successful. And we want this in our new hires. And I love that because I think, you know, I've had companies that really shared their culture

and mission and values with me. One made me memorize it and be on videotape. It had to say it word for word for those three pages. That was hard to memorize. But I think this really shares that this is the value of what we get from this. I...

I've seen a lot of companies, mean, whether I, I've worked with different companies throughout, a lot of them in the US, you know, I've spoken with and had them take the Curiosity Code Index, and they all have a sense that this is the need that we have for the future of this company to remain competitive. And whether I'm working with companies like LinkedIn or entrepreneurs organization, I mean, from all realms that I've spoken with

had them take this assessment, I found that they each do something a little bit different. Novartis, their curiosity month, no one else is doing. So I mean, that's unique to them. I don't think that there's one right thing to do. I think it's based on your culture. I think it's based on what you're trying to achieve. I think it's where you are now compared to where you could be. You can't go big. If you're little, you have to start an increment baby steps sometimes.

You know, not every company has the resources that a big pharma company has to do what you guys did. So I think it's really individual, but I think doing little videos, doing things like that are a good basic first step that could lead to the next step. And I liked another thing that they did at Novartis with the, like I call them mini Ted talks, where you had the employees share something that they learned. And I think that those kinds of things don't cost a lot of money. Those kinds of things you can get your employees instead of hiring people like us.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (41:09.648)
to come in, you get your employees to share something that they've learned, no better way to learn something than to teach it. so that person learns and then everybody else learns. So I think that there's a lot of initiatives that I would like more companies to share again. Everybody's keeping all this stuff to themselves. That's really great stuff. I mean, I had Xander Lurie on my show from Survey Monkey and...

He was the CEO at the time of SurveyMonkey. And they really did a lot of different things. They had skip level meetings. They had all these different things to encourage people to share ideas. And I think that every company has a lot to share if they've encouraged a culture of curiosity. Because even I was surprised by my study that all these companies were saying, yeah, we're doing all this with curiosity because I'm not seeing a lot of that being reported in the literature.

Garrick (42:02.53)
Hmm, not yet.

Simon Brown (42:03.273)
I love that. And you're right, it's different by different companies as to what works. I think showing that this is what we value and showing that this is how people progress in the organization using that Verizon example, I think is so powerful that everything is geared up then around, we're going to reward those who are curious that they will progress more in the organization. And that's what we value as an organization. So yeah, it's great to see.

Garrick (42:28.802)
Done. Sorry, done.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (42:29.034)
I agree, just, most people share it.

Garrick (42:35.032)
Do you want to say that again, Diane,

Dr. Diane Hamilton (42:38.158)
I agree. I just wish that more people would share what they're doing, and I hope they do.

Garrick (42:42.882)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I wonder, what are you personally most curious about right now?

Dr. Diane Hamilton (42:54.306)
Well, right now I think it's chat GPT. It's just so fascinating to me. I mean, I know there's other platforms, but I guess I got sucked into that one a lot because it's just.

Garrick (42:57.575)
Hahaha!

Dr. Diane Hamilton (43:06.962)
So amazing to me that it can you put in something that would take me a month to read and it reads it in one second and it's just the sheer speed of what it can do is really fascinating to me. mean, I, you can learn so many things if it's accurate. you see the accuracy is what I'm probably most interested in is how accurate is this? And if it's

I guess the certification training I took said, I'm trying to remember because I had to take a test on it, it said it was like 65 % accurate unless you prompted it properly and then it got up to like 85 % and then if you asked it

check itself is that accurate information, then you got up to it got up to 90 % according to the certification training I took, but you had to make sure you jump through the hoops to get to that. And I think that learning about that is really important, especially if we're going to start incorporating some of this, which I think we'll see a lot more of it in the business setting. And we need to know what it can do, what it's good at, what it's not good at, and why.

Simon Brown (44:04.117)
Yeah.

Simon Brown (44:24.645)
So we're coming close to time. So we've covered a lot. we've heard about your new book, Curiosity Unleashed. We heard what inspired you to get into curiosity around wondering why some people were more curious than others. We've heard about your first book, Cracking the Curiosity Code. We talked about the financial connection, your definition of curiosity. So there's getting out of the quo thinking.

We heard why that's so important, but also why that's so hard. We heard how several people that you cited of Oprah and Mae Jameson and various others that it was actually curiosity that was one of the key things they attribute their success to, including the likes of Warren Buffett of why curiosity is so important for him. And also even the likes of Elon Musk as well. We heard why we shouldn't embrace the status quo, how we should be utilizing

new technology, also how the things that get in the way. So fate of our, yeah, fear, our assumptions, our technology and our environment. We heard how we can get stuck in our culture and then why it's so hard to attribute financial value to curiosity and some great discussions around there. How curiosity can solve so many of our problems and then into artificial intelligence, artificial curiosity.

how AI can be curious and how you're currently curious as think I'll garric and myself around where's AI gonna go and what's next with the chat GPT and what's gonna happen when five comes out which is rumored in the not too distant future. So out of all of that, what would be the takeaway for our listeners? What would you leave as your parting thought for them, Dan?

Garrick (46:04.686)
That's right.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (46:12.546)
Well, I'm also curious of why AI can't seem to draw letters properly. I think, know, I'm like, what's this? What happened to all the words? But I think that the key takeaway is to recognize that it's important to

Garrick (46:17.928)
Hahaha

Simon Brown (46:18.738)
Yes.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (46:31.392)
just look at what you're doing and realize you don't know some of the things you don't know. And getting mentorship can be helpful. Having people around you to give you a reality check that maybe you should look here or look there because you've just entrenched yourself so much in the status quo. I think it's just taking that kind of analysis of what is inhibiting you from your own perspective. How is fear, how is assumptions, technology and environment, how are those things impacting

you and kind of do a personal swat of your own and just think about how to overcome some of those threats and weaknesses and if you can create some goals for yourself for some of those things but really get an outside perspective it's so much easier for somebody else to point out some stuff and we have to have a little bit thicker skin and realize that 360s are important when i had daniel goldman on my show you know he was very much into the value of a 360 valuation for emotional intelligence

Because curiosity is like emotional intelligence. Those people who need it aren't going to pick up the book to read about it, right? We need them to get this outside perspective. And sometimes it's helping to get this great mentorship. I've been involved in so many companies that I've been a mentor or I'm on mentor groups. And I think it's just so critical to help everybody else. And I hope more people serve as mentors and get mentors.

Simon Brown (48:01.087)
So if you haven't got a mentor, then maybe start thinking about who could be your mentor and who can help in guiding, yeah, what do you know, what you don't know. I remember when we had Brian Murphy on, he talked about hold lightly onto what we believe to be true. think a mentor can be greater than what actually is true, what do we believe, and yeah, where do we need to revisit what we know. So as before, we fantastic conversations. So a huge thank you for joining us.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (48:14.81)
Great.

Garrick (48:14.958)
Mm.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (48:28.824)
Well, thank you for having me. I always have such great conversations with you guys. This is wonderful.

Garrick (48:28.888)
Thank you, Diane.

Garrick (48:33.346)
Well, I don't think this chat GPT can do as great a summary of these things as Simon can. mean, he's pretty amazing every time. Diane, thank you again. Always a pleasure.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (48:39.959)
Ha ha

Dr. Diane Hamilton (48:43.906)
I agree.

Dr. Diane Hamilton (48:47.31)
Thank you.

Simon Brown (48:47.913)
Big thank you. So you've been listening to a Curious Advantage podcast. We're curious to hear from you. If you think there's something useful or valuable from this conversation, then please do write a review for the podcast on your preferred channel saying why this was so and what you've learned from it. And don't forget to give us a five star rating. We always appreciate hearing our listeners thoughts and having a curious conversation. So use the hashtag curious advantage. Curious Advantage book is available on Amazon worldwide. your physical, digital or audio book copy now to further explore our seven seas

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